“Aw right, Sam! I’m ready!”
Then two men came in from the alley, hurrying.
“Say, that feller Hesbern bought two quarts down to the Claybank, er somers. We seen ’im emptyin’ it out back jes’ now!”
“Pretendin’ to liquor up, eh?” Cock Eye grimaced. “An’ keepin’ steady, eh—huh!”
“That’s so,” an awed whisper ran around, some one saying, “Better get set, Cock Eye!”
The bartender swallowed obviously, his beady little eyes rolling in their fat sockets. He took a couple of slugs himself. He needed a bracer. He was a humorist, not a fighting man. At the same time he wasn’t deficient when it came to a showdown. He’d bashed in a man’s skull, served as a bouncer innumerable times, and had come clear on the charge of shooting Dingo Washington in self-defense. He wouldn’t back down in face of necessity. He hung up his apron, and the proprietor of the One Way Thru quietly took the bartender’s place, spelling him.
Grimly, looking neither to right nor left, Cock Eye Baer sallied forth into the darkness of the alleys. No one followed him. Men sauntered casually out into the gloom and stood, listening. Then they heard two shots, almost together, but none could tell by the echoes from blank walls and bad land bluffs just whence came the sounds.
In a few minutes the One Way Thru Saloon was crowded to overflowing, every one waiting expectantly. Cock Eye Baer did not return in ten minutes, nor in half an hour. In an hour or two men went scouting cautiously around in the alleys. But it was dawn before any one learned anything of importance. Then on the shortcut path down to the strollers’ camp ground City Marshal Pete Culder found Cock Eye lying dead with a bullet buried in his thick chest, driven in the direction of his heart. In Cock Eye’s hand, held in rigor mortis was his heavy revolver, with one bullet gone from its cylinder.
“Doggone! I knowed that Hesbern’s bad!” Culder gasped. “I’ll go down to find ’im, ’f I can!”